


The Long View

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-31
Updated: 2006-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many happy returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long View

**Author's Note:**

> 15minuteficlets: scorch

When Sydney's birthday comes, she receives a phone call from her daughter, flowers from her husband, an email from her son, and a personal visit from her dead father. She stands still in the doorway of her house and her mouth is probably gaping, and this is where she should be reaching for a gun because. He hasn't aged. Not one day.

"Dad?" she says, her hand trembling on the doorframe, and if he wasn't her dad, if he was a double, he could have killed her with no effort whatsoever. Instead, his face creases with pain.

"Hello, Sydney."

And, just like that, he spills onto the welcome mat, blood and bruises and the heat blasting in from behind him.

Sydney stands pale-faced over his unmoving body, half-crouching despite herself, despite knowing that it _can't_ be him, that it _mustn't_, and she is suddenly horribly sure that she's going to throw up. Hidden in the impossible late afternoon shadows, a flash of blond hair and a cocky grin; a gun, too, if she cares to look.

She doesn't.

"Dad," she says, and her voice hitches, sweet and tiny as it had been decades ago; then, "daddy," and Sark is watching this with a smile stretched taut across his thin face. Had she really once thought him attractive? He had the manner of a vulture now, or a corpse.

"I believe you owe me now, Sydney," he says. He scrubs a hand through greying hair and mock-bows, still moving as swiftly as he always had. "You're _welcome,_ Agent Bristow."

Sydney cannot spare him eyes to glare; not when Jack takes one laboured breath after the other and, God, God, he's _younger_ than her.

*

fin


End file.
